In each of these cases Islam was apparently 'offended', providing 'justification' for the crimes against these apostates and blasphemers. Those who claim Islam is a religion of peace need to think further about the behaviour of Islamists and how they justify their actions.

Papal elections are God's Olympics. The splendour, the global publicity, the weeping crowds, the human drama, the race to the finish, all dazzle the senses and beg interpretive meaning. There is none. The conclave is showmanship. Those who believe the pope to be God's minister on Earth must regard his choice as no more than an act of God. Those who believe otherwise see him as leader of a large but declining conservative sect, a genial figurehead but with a mostly baleful influence on the societies over which he claims authority. It is in the latter respect that his election matters.

Catholic theology remains obscure. Was this week's happening in the Sistine Chapel a political manoeuvre, in which cunning cardinals judged the needs of a scandal-ridden 21st-century church? Or was it a celestial Ouija board, in which an all-seeing, almighty God amused himself pushing 115 voting slips this way and that for a couple of days? Were the cardinals free agents, or not?

There are times when Rome would have done well to concede the Albigensian heresy, that the world is a place of good and evil in perpetual contention. By declaring God's omnipotence and, later, the church's infallibility, Catholicism has come to tarnish the Almighty with paedophilia, money laundering and support for dodgy dictatorships, from which no amount of prayer seems able to liberate Him, or it.

Iran and Saudi Arabia would always struggle to avoid collision, but ethnic and sectarian tension certainly doesn’t help. Iran is a majority Persian country that belongs to the Shiite branch of Islam. The vast majority of Saudis are Sunni Arabs, with a Shiite Arab minority (about 10%).

The two governments are also ideological rivals:Wahabism: Saudi royals have spent vast amounts of money funding the spread of the (Sunni) Wahabi school, an ultra-conservative, literal interpretation of Islam, which is the state religion in Saudi Arabia. The official title of the Saudi King includes the duty of the "Guardian of the Two Holy Places", Mecca and Medina, suggesting a degree of a divine authority.Supreme Leader: The Islamic Republic of Iran, on the other hand, has promoted its version of political Islam, a combination of elected republican institutions under the guidance of a Muslim cleric, the Supreme Leader. The founder of the Iranian regime, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, condemned the Saudi monarchy as a tyrannical, illegitimate clique that answers to Washington, rather than God.http://middleeast.about.com/od/iran/tp/Iran-And-Saudi-Arabia-Middle-East-Cold-War.htmGuess what?... The Iranian and the Sunnis are battling it out in Syria under the guise of freedom... Helping the "rebels" in Syria would be like arming Al Qaeda... actually "it's not like", it is arming Al Qaeda (an extreme version of extreme Islamic Wahabism) .... The intervention of the West in Syria is not about "freedom", it's about arresting the power of Iran in favour of the Saudis — who for all intent and purposes are more despotic than the Iranians but are deemed to be "our friends"...

Less than 48 hours into the world's first Latin American papacy, David Cameron took issue in public with Pope Francis on Friday, quipping that the "white smoke over the Falklands was pretty clear" and dismissing the pontiff's explicit claims backing Argentinian ownership of the South Atlantic islands.

As archbishop of Buenos Aires, the new pope had frequently laid claim to Argentinian dominion over the Falklands, describing them as part of Argentina's homeland. He had presided over religious ceremonies commemorating his countrymen's servicemen who died in the 1982 war following the junta's invasion of the islands.

"I don't agree with him, respectfully, obviously," Cameron said when asked about Pope Francis's views on the Falklands.

In a referendum last week in the Falklands a total of three voted not to remain under the British, the tiniest minority among more than 1,500 who said the islands should remain a Crown overseas territory.